ABSTRACT

This chapter examines why classical liberals, revisionist liberals, socialists, and conservatives endorse different types of equal treatment. It explains how their differing interpretations of the concepts of liberty and equality lead them to competing positions on one of the central questions of political theory: do liberty and equality conflict. The chapter argues that classical liberals, starting from their assumption of equal freedom and the need for impartial political authority, endorse equality before the law and civic equality. It considers attempts to reconcile liberty and equality and analyzes revisionist liberal proposals. The chapter also considers a positive liberty argument more typical of socialism than revisionist liberalism—Richard Norman's analysis that equates freedom with the conditions for effective choice. It also examines conservative critiques of both socialist and liberal notions of equality. The chapter traces the conservative hostility to equality to its theory of human nature, its antirationalism, and its theory of society.